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Comment by commandlinefan | Hacker News Reader

Actually I'd be surprised if they're even paying market rate for these developers, regardless of how difficult or impossible it is to find them. COBOL programmers still make about $70,000/year or so (https://www.glassdoor.com/Salaries/cobol-programmer-salary-S...) even though the entire world is going to collapse if they disappear. It would seem that the laws of supply and demand don't apply here.

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Yes it does. If there actually was a bigger demand than there is supply, the salary would raise. The main reason why it doesn't is because a programming language or frameworks are not a barrier for any top developer. Skills usually transfer very well.

The real crux of the matter is that these companies don't want to pay top salaries and thus don't get top developers. As long as there are people who navigate themselves into such niches and are proud of it, the salary for these specialized jobs will stay where it is. Simple as that.

I really don't want to judge your ability, I agree with your comment about C#, Java, JS, C ,... but COBOL is a completely different animal to reason with.

Been there and ran as fast as I could.

Sounds interesting. Can you point me to a COBOL listing that shows some of this difference?

You might want to have a look at the Rosetta Code wiki. They have a lot of COBOL code there. http://www.rosettacode.org/wiki/Category:COBOL

I don’t know COBOL though so I can’t say if this code is idiomatic or not.

Well, it is less than 100000 lines and less than 50 years old, so no, it is not idiomatic.

Touché :)

I don't know. I actually personally know someone that jumped from PHP to COBOL with no significant problem. They had some gripes, of course, but it wasn't a show stopper and they were able to get to work and be productive right away.

It reminds me of the market for rubber. It's such an essential resource that's being threatened by mold, climate change, and more profitable crops, yet prices don't seem to reflect reality.

Synthetic rubber has been invented over 100 years ago. Modern synthetic rubber is better and cheaper than natural.

That what I thought. A show on tv made me question my assumption. Airplane tires and products depend on natural rubber.

I don't believe Glassdoor has enough data to make a claim like that. I know people who can code COBOL, and they're all making significantly more (100%+) than that.

I often think about what would happen if all cobol programmers went on strike

Try it out. :-)

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